Sotomayor to step into the ring

Judge to face questions on impartiality in bid to become first Latina on high court

July 12, 2009|By David G. Savage and James Oliphant, Tribune Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Judge Sonia Sotomayor will go before a Senate committee this week and be pressed to answer questions that have lingered since President Barack Obama made her his first choice for the Supreme Court.

Given a lifetime appointment, will she be a justice who views the law through a liberal lens because of her Latina heritage?

In speeches, she said "gender and national origins ... will make a difference in our judging" and added that a "wise Latina" will "more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male."

Or will she follow her long track record as a careful and moderate judge who sticks to the facts and the law?

Liberal groups and the White House point to thorough analyses of her more than 400 decisions and say they prove she is a judge first, not a Latina activist.

As a New York City prosecutor, corporate lawyer, trial judge and appeals court judge, Sotomayor has an "extraordinary record of following, defending and upholding the rule of the law," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

Republicans are not convinced, and they are determined to make the case against her -- and perhaps Obama as well. They say she will follow his guide and display "empathy" for some litigants and not others.

"Whatever this empathy standard is, it is not the law. It is more akin to politics than law," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

Thanks to her appealing, up-from-the-projects life story and a lopsided Democratic majority, Sotomayor looks to be a sure bet to win confirmation. If so, she will become the second woman among the current nine justices, its third Democratic appointee, and its sixth Roman Catholic.

The historic nature of her nomination could be politically perilous for Republicans. Hispanics are the nation's largest minority, and as the Bronx-born child of Puerto Rican parents, she would be the first Hispanic to join the high court. The 19-member Judiciary Committee has seven Republicans, including Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Jon Kyl of Arizona, who represent states with large Hispanic populations.

Since her nomination May 26, Sotomayor has avoided stumbles -- other than a fall in New York's LaGuardia Airport that left her with a broken ankle. She made the rounds of the Senate offices and described her "wise Latina" comment as a verbal misstep.

Her friends and supporters say she was speaking of the virtues of a judge having a rich and diverse set of experiences, not asserting that one ethnic background is superior to another.

Rachel Moran, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, has known Sotomayor since their days at the Yale Law School, and she invited the judge to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2001. The conference was on the shortage of Hispanics on the bench. It was there she spoke of her hope that a "wise Latina" would make better decisions as a judge.

"I was caught off guard by all the attention this has received," Moran said. "People are affected by their background and experience. Her claim was not that your individual perspective is better or worse, but that you reach better outcomes when multiple perspectives are represented. That's why we have nine people [on the Supreme Court] reviewing decisions."

But Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, links her speech to Obama's comment about "empathy" and Sotomayor's decision last year to reject a discrimination claim from white firefighters in Connecticut. Sessions questions whether Sotomayor will be an impartial judge.

"Empathy is great, perhaps, if you're the beneficiary of it," he said in a Senate speech last week. "But it is not good if you are the litigant on the wrong side of the case, if you don't catch the judge's fancy, or if you fail to appeal to a shared personal experience."

Sotomayor has described herself as "an affirmative action baby," and she has spoken in favor of strict limits on campaign spending. Both stands should put her with the court's liberal bloc. However, she has twice ruled in favor of using police evidence that was obtained through a faulty search, a stand that could put her with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and other conservatives.

Law professors who have examined her decisions as a judge say they see few signs she is a liberal activist.

"I think she will be moderate liberal who favors narrow decisions, not all that different from [Justices Ruth Bader] Ginsburg or [Stephen] Breyer," said Amanda Frost, a law professor at American University. "Her opinions reveal her to be someone who respects the limits of the judicial role."

She and others predict Sotomayor would be more like moderately liberal David Souter, the retiring jurist she would replace, than Justice William Brennan, the liberal lion whom Souter replaced in 1990.